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I Think My Long-Distance Relationship May Be The One—What Do I Do?

Dear Single John, Okay, so I met this guy over the summer at work and we immediately fell in love. Problem: he lives in Ireland and was only here for the summer. After he left, I was a mess. We talked every day and he begged me to come visit, so the end of Oct. I went there for a week. I had a blast. He promised me we would still talk and what not once I left. We talk MAYBE once a week, but we both have busy lives; I understand that, and with the 6 hour time change, that doesn't help much either. We are both only 19, but I feel like he might be The One. Then again, we are NOT official. He’s with other girls, and I understand that. Maybe he is trying to have his cake and eat it too, but I think about him every day. What should I do?- Far and Away

My advice: See it as a beautiful summer romance, and don't kill yourself trying to make it more than that.

If you guys are going to be together in the future, it will be after college, when both of you have had the opportunity to explore life a little more, and will be in places where, if you both feel the same way, you can move to each other’s continents and see how it goes.

You owe it to yourself to explore the world around you and not spend all your time focused on a guy you met when you were 19. It hurts, I know, but that pain lessens.

There is SO MUCH more to a real relationship than the feelings we have during a summer romance, followed by long-distance longing. I don’t want to demean what you had, and I’m not saying it wasn’t, or isn’t, real, just saying that you never even got halfway into the honeymoon phase—the real stuff comes later.